Wolves dominate regulation, lose in OT: Game 5 recap

Like their parent club, the Chicago Wolves are skating off into the night.
(Chris Jerina/AHL in Photos)

On Friday night, the Wolves were looking to do what the Canucks couldn’t do the weekend before – perform the reverse sweep and snatch a series win away from an opponent. Despite dominating the second and third periods, Chicago fell vicitm to their own bad ice. The visiting Rampage watched calmly as the Wolves couldn’t connect on several golden opportunities, before finally taking an opportunity of their own in the second overtime period to seal the series win.

Look for analysis, chance and zone start data after the jump!

– The Wolves took a pair of early penalties, giving the Rampage a 5-on-3 chance. The penalty kill, which struggled all series, was up to the task in this instance, and for the whole game really. The initial two-man advantage yielded just a pair of chances, but after that, San Antonio managed just three more chances on their subsequent powerplays. San Antonio’s powerplay marker in the 2nd period, came off a long shot from the point.

– San Antonio scored 8 of their 16 goals in the series on the power play.

– Craig MacTavish leaned heavily on the defensive pairings of Connauton/Baumgartner and Hunt/Matheson. Ryan Parent and Yann Sauve started just one shift in the defensive zone, and Sauve saw very little icetime late in the 3rd and in overtime. Parent was victimized on the winning goal as he lost a race for the puck on a potential icing, lost his stick, regained his stick but was guilty of wandering into the corner in the process. This left the slot wide open for San Antonio’s Roman Deryluk. A tough end to a tough season for the once-highly-regarded defensive prospect.

– The first line of Reinprecht/Mancari/Haydar took just one defensive zone faceoff before over time. The few defensive zone faceoffs were left to Kevin Doell for the most part.

– Mike Duco took over Tim Miller’s 3rd line left wing spot midway through the game. Miller wasn’t having a bad game, but MacTavish clearly felt Miller wasn’t having his best game. He saw spot duty with the 4th liners, Stefan Schneider and Tyler Matson. It was quite an effective line when it did see the ice.

– Matson and Miller also had some shifts in overtime with Bill Sweatt and Jordan Schroeder. Mike Davies was back with his usual linemates in the 2nd overtime, so it’s unclear why he was missing in the first overtime.

– The Sweatt/Schroder/Davies trio got better and better as the game went along and were very unlucky not to score. Davies his the post on a tipped shot in the second period and then hit the crossbar on a glorious chance in front on his next shift. Sweatt used his speed and size to power to the net in the third and actually beat Jakob Markstrom but couldn’t find the handle on the puck to tuck it home. That would have been the tying goal with about 6 minutes to go in regulation. Sweatt had another glorious chance to score right before the game was lost, using his speed again to get into a strong scoring position. The puck bounded to Davies who himself looked to have the game in his hands but somehow Markstrom was able to get his leg on the puck.

– Mark Mancari and Steve Reinprecht were both vicitmized by bad ice – Reinprecht with 35 seconds to go received a cross crease pass that he couldn’t quite get over Markstrom. Mancari had half the net to shoot at, just a minute and a half into the overtime, but the puck skipped just as he was shooting and he missed the net.

– The Wolves’ powerplay, a struggle all season, was mostly firing blanks on Friday. Their first powerplay produced a pair of chances for Mancari and then that was it. The Wolves’ power play was much improved for most of the series but they really looked to be missing the sniping talents of Niklas Jensen, who had scored a pair of power play markers in game one.

– Brad Hunt, who so impressed management with his strong play over the last month and a half, has been working hard on his homework. According to Wolves broadcasters Jason Shaver and Billy Gardner, Hunt has only a 10-page psychology paper to finish.